Ms. Pfeiffer sings the blues
'You want to know the truth? Some days I just think I'm a dog.'
By Iain Blair
She's been called "Blond Venus," a "sultry and ethereal beauty," "One of the ten most beautiful women in the world," and "Drop-dead gorgeous."
But for Michelle Pfeiffer, the luminous star of "Tequila Sunrise," "Married to the Mob" and "The Witches of Eastwick," it seems that her beauty is as much a curse as a blessing.
"Sometimes it's difficult living up to everyone's expectations," sighs Pfeiffer, a note of exasperation creeping into her soft voice. "People call me beautiful and sexy and all these things, but what does it mean? You know, I look
at myself in the mirror some days, and I just don't get it. I just don't think I'm that beautiful or extraordinary looking, honestly."
Most men, at least, would beg to differ. Walk into her plush Los Angeles hotel suite where she's holed up doing press for her latest film, "The Fabulous Baker Boys," which opens in Chicago on Friday, and the sheer impact of Pfeiffer's beauty hits you like an electric force.
A long, golden mane frames a face that is as pale and smooth as porcelain, accenting her two most extraordinary features—a wide, voluptuous mouth with a plump upper lip, and two of the biggest, bluest, almond-shaped eyes you've ever seen.
It's an amazing face, delicate, sculpted and sexy, a face that the camera loves to caress, whether its owner is playing an ice-queen in "Scarface" or a warm, earth-mother symbol of fertility in "The Witches of Eastwick."
So it's a bit disconcerting when Pfeiffer carries on to dismiss her looks as "conventionally pretty. I've always felt that's how I am," she insists. "I really don't think I'm this incredibly beautiful creature everyone seems to think I am.
"You want to know the truth? Some days I just think I'm a dog. I honestly do. I just look in the mirror and say `You are ugly! Your eyes are puffy, and you have big bags under them.' Of course, a lot of it has to do with my moods and how happy or sad I'm feeling.
"Right now, I'm really fried, really tired, because I've been working non-stop on all these films. You know, since last year, I've done `Married to the Mob,' `Les Liaisons Dangereuses,' `Tequila Sunrise,' and now 'The Fabulous Baker Boys.' I promised myself I'd take a well-earned break after that, but here I am getting ready to fly off to Moscow early tomorrow morning to start work on 'The Russia House.' "
Based on the best-selling novel by British author John Le Carré, "The Russia House" is being directed by Fred Schepisi ("A Cry in the Dark") and will be filmed on location in Moscow, Leningrad, London, Lisbon and Maine. It has an international cast that includes Sean Connery.
The chance to work with Connery apparently is one of the main reasons Pfeiffer has decided to once again post-pone her vacation. "I've always dreamed of working with Sean, so I'd be crazy not to do this film, however tired I am," she says. "And I won't always be this busy, I'm sure. There's bound to be a slump, and then I'll relax."
Pfeiffer shouldn't bet on it. In a few short years, she has carved out a position for herself as one of Hollywood's most in-demand actresses, and she also has quickly racked up an impressive list of credits that includes working with some of the top leading men in cinema today: "Scarface" with Al Pacino, "The Witches of Eastwick" with Jack Nicholson. "Dangerous Liaisons" with John Malkovich, "Tequila Sunrise" with Mel Gibson and Kurt Russell, and now, "The Fabulous Baker Boys" with Jeff and Beau Bridges.
Who does Pfeiffer rate highly among her leading men? "Oh god, that's so difficult to answer," she says groaning. "I mean, they're all different and they've all been great." She pauses and considers this for a moment before adding that, "I think laughter is very sexy, and I loved working with Mel on `Tequila Sunrise.' He's such a lot of fun to be around, and he's a great practical joker and a mean Scrabble player—he's really competitive."
Mention Al Pacino and Pfeiffer seems more reserved. "Well, 'Scarface' was a very intense movie, and Al's role was a very intense character, and anyway, Al is quite hard to get to know,"she says. "He's a very prívate person, and so am I. We're both pretty guarded people, so that made it more difficult. He was great with all the guys and everything, but I think the nature of our characters played itself out very much in real life.
"Playing Elvira in 'Scarface' was a great role, but unfortunately people started thinking I was just like her," Pfeiffer complains. "For the next year after it came out, I got offered nothing but these terrible bitch roles. That's why I did `Ladyhawke,' because it was so sweet and romantic and I loved the script. I didn't want to get typecast as an icy bitch."
Pfeiffer shouldn't worry unduly. Her subsequent roles have ranged from the fecund earthiness of Sukie in "The Witches of Eastwick" to the wisecracking, gum-chewing Mafia widow Angela in "Married to the Mob."
"'Married to the Mob' was a blast, I really had fun on that movie, and I was very pleased with the results, whereas Witches' was a very difficult shoot and not at all enjoyable. For a start, we didn't have a finished script, which is a disaster. So we'd be doing scenes without really knowing what was going on and what we were supposed to be reacting to. They'd say, 'Well, there's a leg coming through the ceiling, we think, and then over here we might have this face of Jack....' So we had to try and act to all this stuff they were putting in afterwards in special effects. It wasn't a lot of fun."
"Dangerous Liaisons," in which Pfeiffer played the virginal, saintly Madame de Tourvel (a role which won her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress), was "equally tough, but in a good way," she continues. "It was a very tight schedule and all my work was compressed into just four weeks, and I had a lot of difficult, highly emotional scenes. But everyone knew what they were doing, everyone really cared about the project, and the results speak for themselves I think."
Ask Pfeiffer about "Tequila Sunrise," where she plays closer to type as the cool businesswoman, and her answer is equally blunt, if more surprising. "I don't know if I like it because I haven't seen it," she states flatly. "I suppose that is curious, but the reason is simply that I didn't think I was going to like myself in it, so I didn't bother. She was a very controlled sort of person, so it was a rather limiting role for me."
Pfeiffer is much happier talking abou t her latest film, "The Fabulous Baker Boys," in which she gets to play a sexy singer named Susie Diamond who becomes professionally, then romantically, involved with the younger of the Baker brothers, played by Jeff Bridges.
"Susie's a great character to play, because she's a real straight-shooter, there's no bull about her and she doesn't apologize for who she is," Pfeiffer says. "In fact, I wish in a way I was more like her. I mean, I'm pretty honest with people, I try to be, just like everyone tries. But I think we'd all be really shocked if we could get a clear picture of ourselves.
"She's very courageous and she lives life to the fullest every moment, a person who really celebrates life, and I think those are great qualities," she adds. "Susie is the type who isn't afraid to try anything, and that's something I wish I was more like."
The actress shouldn't be so hard on herself. In the film, she gives a sensational performance as a singer—and sings every single note herself, something most actresses would never dream of attempting.
"It was simply terrifying," she confesses. "I mean, it's been years since I last sang—and even then I was never a professional. I think the last singing job I had was playing `The Pink Lady' in 'Grease 2,' and that was back in '82, and getting that part was really a complete fluke.
"So I nearly killed myself training for this part," she says laughingly. "I started by taking all these voice classes, and then I just sang all the time—in my house, in my car, in the shower, of course. And when I wasn't singing, I listened to music all the time."
Despite her entirely convincing performance of such demanding standards as Rodgers & Hart's "My Funny Valentine" and Bacharach & David's "The Look Of Love," don't expect Pfeiffer to rush out and join other actors who are eager to cross over into the music business.
"I have absolutely no desire to make an album, and no, I won't be at the MTV Awards," she giggles, rolling her eyes. "I think just stick to doing what I know how to do best: acting."
In fact, Pfeiffer appears to have become an actress largely by accident. The eldest daughter of a heating and air-conditioning contractor, she was born in the nondescript suburbs of Orange County, Calif., on April 29, 1958—"which makes me a Taurus, and a very typical one," she says. "That means I'm very stubborn, if a bit narrow-sighted sometimes, and I'm strong.
"I never thought I was attractive when I was growing up, because I was more of a tomboy than a typical little girl, and I certainly didn't have this burning ambition to act," says Pfeiffer, who was "amazed" to win the Miss Orange County beauty pageant, her first step on the ladder to the big time.
It was around the same time that Pfeiffer fell for a young, handsome actor, Peter Horton, now the star of "thirtysomething." But after seven years, the marriage disintegrated, and today she speaks sadly, if fondly, of that period in her life.
"Looking back, I think I was just too young to get married," she sighs. "I was 22, and we were both too young, because as we grew up, our views changed and we started going off in different directions. I think what made it harder in a way was that we never stopped caring for each other."
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